Edward Korry

Edward M. Korry was the United States ambassador to Chile from 1967 to 1971. He directed the embassy's covert political program against Salvador Allende in 1970, known as Track I. The CIA's separate effort to provoke a military coup, Track II or Project FUBELT, was run without his knowledge on the instructions of President Richard Nixon. When the operations became public he was identified as a principal in the coup plot, and his diplomatic career ended.¹²

1970

Korry testified that before the election the embassy reported CIA polls showing that the conservative Jorge Alessandri would win with about 40 percent. After Allende's plurality on September 4 he cabled that General René Schneider, the army commander who held the military to the constitution, "would have to be neutralized, by displacement if necessary." On October 16 the CIA's deputy director for plans, Thomas Karamessines, cabled the Santiago station that it was "firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup," and instructed it to disregard contrary orders from the ambassador, who had not been informed. David Atlee Phillips signed the cable as releasing officer. Schneider was shot on October 22 and died three days later.¹³

Korry said in 1974 that fund-raisers for all three candidates had approached the embassy in 1970, that Allende's had asked for one million dollars, and that none was given. He said that in early 1971 he had offered Allende "the most incredibly generous package we have ever offered any government," under which the United States Treasury would underwrite Chilean bonds if Chile negotiated compensation for ITT, Anaconda, and Kennecott, and that Allende told him that if he accepted there would be no Chilean revolution. He added that the United States had infiltrated the leadership of the Chilean Communist and Socialist parties. A cable of September 29, 1971, which he later gave to the Senate, called the confrontation over copper "a deliberate political decision by Allende" and "a conscious challenge to the tradition of US defense of its major business interests in Latin America."³⁴

On June 18, 1970, Korry had proposed to the 40 Committee a fund of 250,000 dollars to bribe members of the Chilean congress. He told an intermediary of President Frei that September: "Not a nut or bolt will be allowed to reach Chile under Allende. We shall do all within our power to condemn Chile and the Chilean to utmost deprivation and poverty." His cable of September 24 proposed rumors of rationing to start a "run on food stocks," asking American banks "to suddenly halt renewal of credit," and having American companies "foot-drag to maximum possible" on orders and spare parts. On October 6, having learned of coup plotting, he cabled Kissinger: "I think any attempt on our part actively to encourage a coup could lead us to a Bay of Pigs failure." Kissinger overruled his order that the CIA station keep away from the military. When he entered the Oval Office on October 15 the president was striking his fist in his palm. "Not you, Mr. Ambassador. It's that son of a bitch Allende. We're going to smash him." After the shooting of General Schneider he asked the station chief, Henry Hecksher, whether the agency had been "engaged in activities of any kind" that could support charges against the army attaché, and was told that "since Station not involved, COS doubted that charges could be substantiated."⁵

The Church Committee

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Activities issued its reports on assassination plots and on covert action in Chile in November and December 1975. Both named Korry repeatedly. He said he had been barred from testifying despite six months of requests. When he did appear in public session he began: "I requested the CIA program in Chile. I planned much of the covert action in 1970. I drafted most of the policy that the United States pursued with the Allende government in 1971. I met with President Nixon in the Oval Office 2 weeks before General Schneider was murdered. I talked with Dr. Kissinger before and after that grotesque and inexcusable episode. I even attended a 40 Committee meeting. Yet this is the first time I appear before your committee." He called the suggestion that Track I had blurred into Track II "an outrageous falsehood." He said he had been "kept on for 1 more year with the certain knowledge of many in the Government that I did not know that the Allende government thought I was involved in those plots, and that the consequences for any exposure of that plot would fall upon me," and that he had received "a letter from the CIA warning me that public testimony was not in the national interest." His letter to Senator Frank Church of October 23, 1975, entered as an exhibit, stated that the Soviet Union and Cuba had given "very substantial sums for covert political action to the Communist party, to the Socialist Party and to Allende himself."³

The Trento Interviews

In November 1976 Korry gave a series of interviews at his home in Briarcliff Manor, New York, to Joseph Trento of the Wilmington Sunday News Journal, which reported that his charges were being examined by the Department of Justice for possible perjury by officials who had testified to the committee. Korry said that on the orders of Robert F. Kennedy tens of millions of dollars in CIA and Agency for International Development funds had gone to Jesuit-led Catholic groups in Chile; that under President Kennedy relief money for the 1960 Chilean earthquake had been diverted to the same groups for political action; that Kennedy had recruited David Rockefeller to form the Business Group for Latin America, which worked alongside the covert programs of three administrations; that the Allende government had accepted bribes from ITT, General Tire, Cerro, and Anglo-Lautaro Nitrate to prevent expropriation; that ITT had defrauded the government of 89 million dollars by collecting on its federal investment insurance after paying them; and that Church and the committee's vice chairman, John Tower, had made a deal limiting the inquiry into the multinational corporations and into the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. The answer the newspaper recorded was that the committee's report treated the intervention under all three presidents. The newspaper said the charges were confirmed in part by former diplomats and by State Department and CIA documents it had examined. The Overseas Private Investment Corporation had paid ITT 34.7 million dollars in cash and guaranteed 59.4 million in Chilean obligations in 1975.⁶⁷

The Correction

Korry did not find a position until 1979, when Connecticut College made him a visiting professor of international relations. Seymour Hersh, who had written many of the articles in The New York Times connecting him with the plot, including one reporting that he was about to be cited for contempt of Congress, telephoned him in November 1980 for help with a book on Kissinger. "He mentioned that he now knew everything I had told him was true," Korry said. "I said, 'Put it in writing. Tell Abe Rosenthal.'" In February 1981 the Times printed on its front page a 2,300-word article by Hersh, "New Evidence Backs Ex-Envoy on His Role in Chile," which said of the CIA's coup plotting that "none of this, it is now evident, was known to Ambassador Korry." It did not say that its author had written the original stories or that Korry had become a source for his book. "I led the way in trashing him," Hersh told Time. Korry then gave Hersh the information he wanted. Of the correction he said: "It's a start."²